Circulating libraries, which serve for the most part to promote useless reading, were not known when Daniel Dove set up his rest at Doncaster. It was about that time that a dissenting minister, Samuel Fancourt by name, opened the first in London, of course upon a very contracted scale. Book clubs are of much later institution. There was no bookseller in Doncaster till several years afterwards: sometimes an itinerant dealer in such wares opened a stall there on a market day, as Johnson's father used to do at Birmingham; and one or two of the trade regularly kept the fair. A little of the live stock of the London publishers found its way thither at such times, and more of their dead stock, with a regular supply of certain works popular enough to be printed in a cheap form for this kind of sale. And when at the breaking up of a household such books as the deceased or removing owner happened to possess were sold off with the furniture, those which found no better purchaser on the spot usually came into the hands of one of these dealers, and made the tour of the neighbouring markets. It was from such stragglers that the Doctor's ragged regiment had been chiefly raised. Indeed he was so frequent a customer, that the stall-keepers generally offered to his notice any English book which they thought likely to take his fancy, and any one in a foreign language which had not the appearance of a school book. And when in one book he found such references to another as made him desirous of possessing, or at least consulting it, he employed a person at York to make enquiry for it there. CHAPTER CXIII. THOMAS GENT AND ALICE GUY, A TRUE TALE, SHOWING THAT A WOMAN'S CONSTANCY WILL NOT ALWAYS HOLD OUT LONGER THAN TROY TOWN, AND YET THE WOMAN MAY NOT BE THE PARTY WHO IS MOST IN FAULT. _Io dico, non dimando Quel che tu vuoi udir, perch' io l'ho visto Ove s' appunta ogni ubi, e ogni quando._ DANTE.